33 ideas
15169 | Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it) [Sidelle] |
15164 | We seem to base necessities on thought experiments and imagination [Sidelle] |
15717 | Using Choice, you can cut up a small ball and make an enormous one from the pieces [Kaplan/Kaplan] |
15712 | 1 and 0, then add for naturals, subtract for negatives, divide for rationals, take roots for irrationals [Kaplan/Kaplan] |
15711 | The rationals are everywhere - the irrationals are everywhere else [Kaplan/Kaplan] |
15714 | 'Commutative' laws say order makes no difference; 'associative' laws say groupings make no difference [Kaplan/Kaplan] |
15715 | 'Distributive' laws say if you add then multiply, or multiply then add, you get the same result [Kaplan/Kaplan] |
15180 | There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts [Sidelle] |
15184 | Causal reference presupposes essentialism if it refers to modally extended entities [Sidelle] |
15172 | Clearly, essential predications express necessary properties [Sidelle] |
15181 | Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property [Sidelle] |
15173 | That the essence of water is its microstructure is a convention, not a discovery [Sidelle] |
15185 | We aren't clear about 'same stuff as this', so a principle of individuation is needed to identify it [Sidelle] |
15175 | Evaluation of de dicto modalities does not depend on the identity of its objects [Sidelle] |
10993 | Ramsey's Test: believe the consequent if you believe the antecedent [Ramsey, by Read] |
14279 | Asking 'If p, will q?' when p is uncertain, then first add p hypothetically to your knowledge [Ramsey] |
15032 | Necessary a posteriori is conventional for necessity and nonmodal for a posteriority [Sidelle, by Sider] |
15179 | To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary [Sidelle] |
15171 | The necessary a posteriori is statements either of identity or of essence [Sidelle] |
15167 | Empiricism explores necessities and concept-limits by imagining negations of truths [Sidelle] |
15177 | Contradictoriness limits what is possible and what is imaginable [Sidelle] |
15176 | The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention [Sidelle] |
15174 | A thing doesn't need transworld identity prior to rigid reference - that could be a convention of the reference [Sidelle] |
15183 | 'Dthat' operates to make a singular term into a rigid term [Sidelle] |
15165 | A priori knowledge is entirely of analytic truths [Sidelle] |
6894 | Mental terms can be replaced in a sentence by a variable and an existential quantifier [Ramsey] |
15713 | The first million numbers confirm that no number is greater than a million [Kaplan/Kaplan] |
15168 | That water is essentially H2O in some way concerns how we use 'water' [Sidelle] |
15166 | Causal reference seems to get directly at the object, thus leaving its nature open [Sidelle] |
15182 | Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles [Sidelle] |
9418 | All knowledge needs systematizing, and the axioms would be the laws of nature [Ramsey] |
9420 | Causal laws result from the simplest axioms of a complete deductive system [Ramsey] |
15178 | Can anything in science reveal the necessity of what it discovers? [Sidelle] |